The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Creation and Fall

Guest Post by Marcelo P. Souza

God created all things by his free will, and all things exist outside of his nature. God became the Creator when he wished to become so; creation is not eternal, and there is no necessity in its coming into being. God transcends creation, and he is infinitely good, and so he gives rise to created things and created beings. The generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit are distinct from creation, since the former are eternal, proceeding from the very substance of God. Creation, on the other hand, is the work and result of the free will of God, and so it is not coeternal with God. When creation comes into being, nothing is added to the being of God. Creation is also contingent, since its existence is not necessary, and it depends entirely on the will of God. Any necessity existing in creation is whatever God imposes it to be.

God created the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo) and created man (Adam and then Eve) in His own image (with intellect), and in his likeness, which required growth in obedience. God created man in His own image, meaning that He gave him a portion of the power of the Word, i.e., rational power. God made man in his likeness for the purpose of incorruption. Creation is the work of the Trinity – the Father is the “creator of heaven and earth;” the Holy Spirit is the Lord, “the creator of life,” and the Son is the one “through whom all things were made.” The Father creates through the Son in the Holy Spirit. There are three Persons, but one nature, and therefore one will by which the three Persons freely choose to create out of love. The Father is the primordial cause of everything that has been made, the Son is the operative cause, and the Holy Spirit is the perfective cause.

Creation is effected by the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. St Athanasius says that “The renewal of creation has been wrought by the self-same Word Who created the world it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation: the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it in the beginning.”  God bestowed grace on man which other creatures lacked, namely, the impress of his own image, which St Athanasius defines as a share in the reasonable being of the very Word himself, becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even though in a limited degree. Man was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason he reflected the very Word himself. Adam and Eve were created with a perfect human nature, and having spent some time in his primordial state learning obedience to God, in order to grow in the knowledge of him, man choose to disobey God.

God creates as a free and personal God, bringing all things into existence by his will, in his wisdom – and the λογοι of all things are contained in this will and wisdom; in this way, the Christian tradition maintains an aspect of pagan thought, viz., our created universe is an image of eternal realities. For St Maximos the Confessor, when God creates man, he communicates to him four of his own properties: being, eternity, goodness and wisdom.^[1]St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Chapters on Love, III.25. As the image of God, man is created as a microcosm, uniting, in his hypostatic existence, the intelligible and sensible aspects of creation.

Angels were created as spiritual beings, whereas animals and other non-human creatures are bodily creatures with the breath of life. Man, as spiritual and bodily, unites all in himself, and he is given the task to continue to effect that unity; as a Priest, he is to bring himself and all creation as a sacrificial offering to God. St Maximos the Confessor lists five polarities which overcome in the very being of man as a microcosm: God and creation, the intelligible and the sensible, heaven and earth, paradise and the world, man and woman. Adam ultimately failed to keep these polarities united, but the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, reunites them.

Man is not an autonomous being, but his true humanity is realized only in God – as such, he possesses divine qualities.^[2]John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p. 139. Man is created to grow in his participation in the divine life; this participation is a gift, but it is also a task to be accomplished by free human effort. This polarity between gift and task reflects the concepts of image and likeness, where the latter implies a dynamic progress in cooperation, or synergy, between the divine will and the human choice – as St Paul says, a progress from “glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18), as man is always an open being. Man was created as a hylomorphic unit of body and soul, and death – the separation between the two – is unnatural because it was not part of creation (at least of man).

The Fathers speak of body and soul, but also of the nous, the aspect of the human spirit (or heart, or soul) that connects directly with God. It is the ability man possesses to transcend himself in order to participate in God – and it can be either clear, in the case of creation (and those who are being redeemed in ascetic effort) or dimmed, as it is after the Fall.

Man is created in communion with God, and it is in this communion, as part of his natural state, that man can have a direct knowledge and experience of God. It is this state of friendship with God which was man’s state before the Fall. However, evil entered the world through the will, and evil is not an essence, but a condition or a deprivation of the good. Diadochus of Photike says that “good exists while evil does not exist, or rather it exists only at the moment in which it is practiced.”^[3]Ascetic Treatise III, quoted in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 128.

The very desire to taste bodily of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the first sin, a disease of the will, i.e., the wrong exercise of free will. Man was naturally disposed to the knowledge and love of God, but in creation, sin originated in the spiritual world, in the will of fallen angels; it was through that alien persuasion that man assented to the suggestion and attraction of an illusory goal (which was the beginning of the gnomic will in man) and consented to disobedience and evil in his desire and choice. As St Maximos says, “evil is the irrational movement of natural powers toward something other than their proper goal, based on n erroneous judgment. By ‘goal’ I mean the Cause of beings, which all things naturally desire.”^[4]To Thalassius, : On Various Questions 1.2.12.

St Maximos the Confessor argues that the creation of visible things was called the tree of the knowledge of good an evil because of its spiritual power to nourish the mind, and the natural power to charm the senses – and yet also having the poewr to pervert the mind. In other words, when spiritually contemplated, creation offers the knowledge of the good, while when it is received bodily it offers the knowledge of evil, i.e., it becomes a “teacher of passions,” leading men to forget about divine things.^[5]To Thalassius, Introduction. 

As St Palamas says, our ancestors had the responsibility never to forget God, and to become accomplished in the habit of contemplation; but experience of things pleasant to the sense is of no profit to those who are still imperfect (as Adam and Eve were still growing in obedience in wisdom into the likeness of God). In their imperfection, they were easily displaced toward good or towards its opposite.^[6]One Hundred and Fifty Chapters 50.1-7, quoted in Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God vol. II. pg. 164.

It is for this reason that God temporarily forbade man to partake of it, thereby delaying his participation in it, so that, through participation in grace, man might first know God; and afterwards, by partaking of grace, “add impassibility and immutability to the immortality given to him by grace . . .  become God through divinization . . .  examine with God the creations of God, and acquire knowledge of them, not as man but as god.”^[7]Ibid., 1.2.18 Had man shown himself obedient over a period of time, he would have begun to be habituated to the good, and it would have been more difficult for the the Fall to take place.

Choosing to desire and to disobey, the original unity of man was broken, and human nature was “cut up into myriad parts, and we who are of one and the same nature devour each other like wild animals.”^[8]Ibid., 1.2.15 The direct experience of God man had in creation is lost through a dimmed nous, and replaced by participation in sensile realities; like irrational beasts, sustaining the physical nature of the body, and straying from the intelligible beauty and splendor of divine perfection, man worships the creature rather than the Creator. Instead of persevering in effort and choosing to persist and advance in his participation in things which were good but less sensible, man preferred rather to choose enjoyment sensible things more easily grasped.

Nature was created lush and beautiful, corresponding to the beauty of the intelligible realities, and so  it constituted a further temptation for man to enjoy what was at hand rather than what demanded to know and enjoy.  Looking towards heaven, he rejoiced at what he had seen, loving the Creator who granted him the enjoyment of eternal life, who rested upon him the pleasures of paradise. God gave him mastery like that of the angels, and an existence like that of the archangels, and made him a hearer of the heavenly voice; but he was soon satiated with everything and became somehow insolent in his repletion, preferring the delight appearing before the eyes of the flesh to intelligible beauty and placing a full belly above spiritual enjoyments.^[9]Staniloae, p. 165.

The Fall brings about self-love, which is the beginning of the passions, and pride, or arrogance, is the ultimate realization of self-love. In redemption, the whole purpose of the Christian life is the overcoming of self-love.

There are also moral and metaphysical implications of this, as self-love takes hold because we are no longer perceiving God in creation, and the sensible world becomes a veil to the things of God. As a consequence, we end up with a dialectic, with the two poles of self-love: pain and pleasure. Ignorance of self and ignorance of others renders our self in pieces, since in self-love we end up loving and worshipping our bodies, which are the things that remains visible to us. We become oriented to physical things and replace God with the world through the senses, which is the knowledge of evil.

In his love, God manifests himself through a body and then draws our attention to higher things. For this purpose the incorruptible and immaterial Word of God takes a body of our own kind, albeit pure. By offering unto death this body, as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, He puts away death from all His peers. The Word made man in the beginning, and the same Word now redeems man.